In the Kitchen: New York Cheesecake

by Emily on January 24, 2012

Sunday was our monthly family dinner, and this month’s theme was New York Deli. We had delicious corned beef and pastrami sandwiches and an array of delicious deli side dishes that would make you wish that every meal was lunchtime in the City. My contribution to the meal was dessert. Maybe I’m a rebel but instead of a deli cookie, I wanted to play on the New York part of the theme and made my first real cheesecake (yes, you read that right…my first)!

Sure I’ve put together a no-bake Jello-O cheesecake around the campground before, but this was the real deal. So real in fact that the recipe called for 2.5 lbs of cream cheese! Yikes….but I was up for the challenge and hoped the families were up for a rich dessert. Cheesecake is not the dessert I tend to go for first, but for Sid it’s his #1.

After shopping around various websites for recipe, I decided on Emeril Lagasse’s 2003 publication via Food Network. The 157 5-star reviews sold me that this ought to be a good one!

I think the cake turned out pretty picturesque with the exception of the sides. My mistake completely! I poured the batter into the pan without prepping the sides of the pan first, so I then tried to remove as much as I could before I re-filled the pan for baking. You can see exactly where my non-stick reached and where it didn’t. But to be honest, it tasted just the same!

Instead of prepping all three fruit toppings like the recipe suggested, I chose to stick to the standard strawberry and boy was that good.

All in all, I highly recommend this recipe if you’re looking for a dessert. It was creamy, light and rich. I liked that it wasn’t too dense and just to be sure, I re-tested it last night (all in the name of blog research).